Comment by vmurthy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vmurthy | Hacker News Reader

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True there are billions of concepts but if you think about it, a few concepts explain a ton of things. For e.g., incentives. A simple concept in theory but apply the right incentives if you are leading teams and you'll see a whole lot of improvements. And that's the beauty of mental models. You don't want billions of them. Maybe 20-30 of them have enough applicability for most of the things that you might want to change in your immediate milieu.

Here's an example :

"The heart and soul of the integrity of the ( Fedex )system is that all the packages have to be shifted rapidly in one central location each night. And the system has no integrity if the whole shift can’t be done fast. And Federal Express had one hell of a time getting the thing to work. And they tried moral suasion, they tried everything in the world, and finally somebody got the happy thought that they were paying the night shift by the hour, and that maybe if they paid them by the shift, the system would work better. And lo and behold, that solution worked."

Source : https://fs.blog/2017/10/bias-incentives-reinforcement/

Edit : clarity and some speeling mistakes ;-)

Yes, I agree logical concepts can be abstracted into generic core concepts. Like how the concept of "picking up a coffee cup" can be abstracted into the more generic core concept of "picking up an object" which can be applied more broadly.

But that's more about logical reasoning than it is about mental models. A mental model is how the brain understands a logical concept.

There's also a danger with it becoming counter-productive. For example you might want to learn how to ride a bike. You educate yourself about the technical workings of the bike. How your body will balance itself. When you need to apply force on the paddles. Which muscles you will use to apply that force. You gain full understanding of the concept of "riding bike". This doesn't mean, however, you now have a proper functioning mental model of it. The other kid didn't do all the research you did. He just got on his bike and started trying. After some trial and error he's already making some distance. His mental model of "riding bike" might already exceed yours even though you have a better understanding of how it works. You might even be learning more slowly since you're constantly distracted by how the development of your mental model matches up with your understanding of it.

I believe this is also why some people stutter. They're constantly thinking about their speech. Their mental model of "speaking" gets interrupted by them thinking about it.

So I agree it's valuable to understand core concepts. It's valuable to think about how the brain works. It's valuable to be able to use your feelings (caused by your mental model) as tools to effectively make use of your brain. But I'm not sure it's wise to mess with the mental model that the brain creates about concepts. Or to define a logical concept as a mental model.

The philosopher Peter Sloterdijk describes ‘ideology’ as a personal idea of how the world _really_ works. You could call that a mental model. However, when I think specifically about the subject ‘mental models’ I return to the concept I learned about first in the Coursera course Model Thinking by Scott E. Page (University of Michigan). He teaches a survey of many different models. For example, there is the Threshold Model [1] developed by Mark Granovetter and others. This general concept can be applied to a variety of problems from predicting the spread of infectious disease, to the spread of social trends in human culture. While the concept can be generalized, it’s also theoretically grounded in mathematics and statistics.

For this reason I find the OP’s follow-up somewhat—misguided? Seems like he needs to pick a topic and do some research. Unless we’re just talking about our favorite books, which is basically what the thread has become. And I love it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_model

Just reading through comments to aggregate notes, and as the OP, yep: I meant something closer to "favorite books" but with the condition that they happen to introduce, by intention or unintentionally, a (single) "mental model" (not to be too strict about the definition) or perspective of sorts. I realize now my original question was not that clear, sorry about that!

Well. Thanks for the apology; I feel the pain. Broad minded thinking runs into this problem frequently. But the more I think about it—What’s good in literature and science and also satisfies the constraint of a grand conceit—the more I believe the only satisfactory ‘answer’ is the one they answer for their self. I’ve been trying to answer some similar questions in philosophy of language since 2005, and I’m still at it. I say, go for it. We will all be interested to read what you write.

Thanks for the encouragement to write, it was entirely unexpected and pleasant - kind of a glimmer of the olde, small internet days. I didn't have this piece in mind when posting on HN, but all the book recommendations got me thinking and this is what managed to land on the word processor.

https://blog.usejournal.com/effort-neglect-and-the-second-te...

P.S. I am not part of “Journal,” and don’t use it. One of their people reached out to me and asked if I’d submit my piece to their publication.

I wish they had gone into what they meant by paid by the shift. Does that mean they got to go home early if the work was done? They had to stay later if it wasn't? I'm not sure that paying for 8 hours is much incentive, and forcing people to work more for the same money seems like it would be a recipe for disaster. Giving a reward for getting through the mail faster by getting to go home early send like a pretty awesome reward though.

I worked in a warehouse once, emptying containers full of boxes. We were paid by "container hours", so if we emptied a 4 hour container in 2 hours, we got double salary. That was a good motivation to work fast.

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